Category Archives: London

London: Ryan Hewett @ The Unit

October 2, 2016 butterfly

South African artist Ryan Hewett is returning to London for a third solo show at the Unit London called ‘Order‘.

Moving away from his chaotic creative process of construction and destruction towards a more considered and confident approach, the new body of works includes self-portraits, portraits of Lucian Freud, Egon Schiele, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett and Audrey Hepburn and, for the first time ever, landscapes.

Ryan Hewett - Order

While paint is still applied impasto – brushes and masks are employed alongside the palette knife to create hard lines and graded blocks of colour. While representing a significant step change for the artist, Hewett’s new works retain the unsettling beauty for which he has become renowned.

Ryan Hewett - Order

View the full set of pics here

Ryan Hewett – Order
Until 26 October 2016
The Unit London

Books, London, Shows

London: Conor Harrington ‘ Watch Your Palace Fall’

September 17, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

After nine months of preparation, Irish born, London based artist Conor Harrington is presenting a new solo exhibition ‘Watch Your Palace Fall’ at Pace Gallery London in Soho.

Continuing his narrative of politically charged oil paintings, Conor Harrington depicts fights between military male characters dressed in 18th century uniforms, with all the rage and thirst for power.

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The chase for power is certainly timeless and draws references to the contemporary political climate, as illustrated in Sluggers Paradise (2016), a large diptych featuring a tug of war and coloured to represent the classic blue and red of opposing political parties.

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Amongst the eleven new canvases, six of them feature a ‘ Golden Mask’, a recurring theme in Conor Harrington’s body of work, where the portrait explores his alter ego.

Conor Harrington - Watch Your Palace Fall conor-harrington-35-custom

“These paintings are a nod to political deceit, the lies and half truths told to assume a role and gain power, the prevalence of social media selves at the expense of the real self and the graffiti alter ego, acquiring a pseudonym and hiding your true identity.” – Conor Harrington, August 2016.

Guests at the opening were also happy to taste beer with customised labels and browse in advance through the upcoming monograph Conor Harrington: Watch Your Palace Fall by HENI Publishing, a retrospective of Conor Harrington’s painting career.

Officially released on 27 October 2016, you can preorder a copy HERE. A book launch event & signing event will be hosted on Sunday 2 October 2016, 11:30–2pm.

Conor Harrington - Watch Your Palace Fall conor-harrington-36-custom

View the full set of pics here

Conor Harrington – “Watch Your Palace Fall’
Until 8 October 2016
6-10 Lexington Street, London

London, Shows

London: A. Giacometti and Yves Klein at the Gagosian

June 23, 2016 butterfly

Gagosian Gallery in London is currently presenting the first-ever exhibition to pair key works by Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) and Yves Klein (1928–1962).

At first glance, Giacometti and Klein, artists born a generation apart, could not be more different: Giacometti was a master of material form, and of the representation of the figure; Klein was an influential theorist whose art married the conceptual with the cosmic. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the two artists lived and worked within a mile of each other, in Montparnasse, Paris, but there are few clues in their work to suggest that they shared the same artistic milieu. What they did have in common was an acute consciousness of the catastrophic effects of the Second World War and its aftermath on European culture. Each dealt with it in his own way: in his sculptures, Giacometti struggled to evince a vital human presence from nothing; Klein shunned the personal, autobiographical mark, attempting to dematerialise painting to the point of pure saturated colour.

Curated by Joachim Pissarro, Giacometti’s nervously modelled figures and heads are confronted by Klein’s intense and expansive colours. Each artist is generously represented by works on loan from the Fondation Alberto Giacometti, the Yves Klein Archives, the Beyeler Foundation, and distinguished private collections.

A. Giacometti & Yves Klein

View the full set of pics here

Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein
In Search of the Absolute
Gagosian Gallery
20 Grosvenor Hill
London W1K 3QD

London, Shows, Uncategorized

Collaboration with the Donmar Warehouse

June 2, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

Logos

We are pleased to announce an artistic collaboration between Butterfly Art News and the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London.

Differents artists will create a visual interpretation of the current show played at the theatre. Their artwork will be on view for the duration of the show at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, 41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX.

ELEGY: Until 18 June 2016

By Nick Payne, directed by Josie Rourke, with set design by Tom Scutt, lighting by Paule Constable and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph.

“What if every neuron in the human brain could be mapped and decoded? Every act of human behaviour catalogued and wholly understood? Elegy imagines a very-near future in which radical and unprecedented advances in medical science mean that it’s now possible to augment and extend life. Elegy explores a world in which the brain is no longer a mystery to us. But at what cost?”

Featured Artist: Hisham Echafaki

Hisham Echafaki is a London based artist with a fascination for the animal world.
His work focuses on surrealist compositions and often examines the impact of humankind on nature and issues of conservation.

**Sea Ballet** – Acrylic on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Elegy 01 - 500 — **Elegy Cast: Barbara Flynn, Zoe Wanamaker and Nina Sosanya**

Elegy 03 - 500

Elaine - 500 — **Thom Petty and Elaine Cassidy**

Donmar Warehouse Theatre
41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials,
London WC2H 9LX

London, Shows

London: Yayoi Kusama @ Victoria Miro

June 1, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

Yayoi Kusama

Victoria Miro is currently hosting a new exhibition by Yayoi Kusama. Spanning the gallery’s three locations and waterside garden, the exhibition features new paintings, pumpkin sculptures, and immersive room experiences, all made especially for this presentation. This is the artist’s most extensive exhibition at the gallery to date, and it is the first time mirror rooms have gone on view in London since Kusama’s major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2012.

85 years old avant garde multidisciplinary artist Yayoi Kusama has developed a practice which resists any singular classification, though it shares affiliations with Surrealism, Minimalism, Pop art, the Zero and Nul movements, Eccentric Abstraction and Feminist art.

Her iconic dots patterns, pumpkins and mirror rooms is a lifelong exploration of the self’s relationship to the infinite cosmos. Her installations place the viewer within a universe of varying proliferating reflections.

New paintings displayed alongside these immersive rooms continue an enduring preoccupation with multiplying polka dots and dense scalloped ‘infinity net’ patterns – Kusama’s obsessive repetition of these forms on canvas, which she has described as a form of active self-obliteration, responds to hallucinations first experienced in childhood. The pumpkin, another motif that she has returned to throughout her career, is also present in the form of new mirror polished sculptures.

Yayoi Kusama